This is really closing the already-small-gap between Apple and their competitors in the All-in-one space. I've been shopping for an All-in-one and it's thoroughly unimpressive - to get something with Apple-level quality, you really have to pay an Apple-level price... and at that point, you start wondering why shop with a brand with a worse reputation than Apple? I mean, I like Asus hardware, but I wouldn't want to pay Apple prices for Asus hardware.
In my experience of looking for an all-in-one: if you want apple-quality but from any other manufacturer, be prepared to actually spend more money than you would on an iMac.
Obviously with an iMac you are not getting a touchscreen that is standard on every other AiO,but I can't say I would use such feature.
Apple's only puts touchscreens on devices that run iOS.
Touchscreens on computers running desktop OSes can be useful, but they're also pretty deeply compromised due to the "gorilla arm" effect and the fact that the UI is just not designed for it. That's fine for some people and companies but it's not how Apple does things.
Of course. In hindsight it's obvious - Apple does something right or not-at-all, and Touchscreens on a normal desktop interface isn't "right". Hence the MS invention of Metro interface and the new shallow-slanting all-in-one devices to avoid gorilla-arm.
Indeed. Depending on your opinion of Apple, they either insist on getting it right, or they wait for other companies to work out the bugs for them. Either way, no iMac touchscreens.
Could you elaborate a little on why you're looking for an AiO computer? I've always seen them as overpriced, underpowered computers for people who don't really want a computer. I don't know why anyone on HN would be in the market for one.
I want a computer in my kitchen breakfast nook. This is a space where I entertain guests - a rat's nest of cables and a large desk are completely inappropriate for that venue. This is a location where I'm willing to pay a premium for aesthetics.
My man-cave basement machine is a proper desktop gaming rig.
Not for myself,but for my mother. She has a tiny tiny desk and she HATES cables, so I suggested an All-in-one would actually be a nice device for her, and she really likes the idea. I wouldn't buy one ever,but I am not the target demographic.
They're very space-efficient and don't create a mess of cords. "Underpowered" is relative to need, and a lot of people don't need all the power in a modern computer.
The Turbo Boost clock speed is only around 15% lower than the other iMacs, though (2.7 GHz vs 3.2 GHz). It looks like the same processor as the MacBook Air. The bigger problem is probably memory--only 8GB, soldered to the board, and no option for more, even at time of purchase. Could be worse, though. With Mavericks, 8GB is about the minimum configuration for "normal people" tasks.
I'd believe that, but your MBA also has an SSD, which partially masks the effect of swapping out pages. True, SSD is an option for the new iMac, but it's not included in the base price.
I fail to understand why someone would buy this over a Mac Mini and an external display: cheaper, more powerful, ability to change displays, only two more cables (power and data for the display).
Simplicity? My grandma doesn't want to buy an "external display", she would truly have no idea where to even start to do that. And then after she's got the Mac mini, the external display, and the cable to connect the display (assuming she was able to find the right one,) someone then has to set it up for her.
Compare that to an iMac. Go to the Apple store, drop $1k, take it home, plug in the power cable, and she's on Facebook in minutes.
That's the friction that iMac removes. If the customer has to leave the electronics store with multiple boxes from several different companies, and has the ability to buy the "wrong thing" (DVI instead of HDMI, etc.), it's probably a sign that the process can be simplified.
Let's be honest here, your grandma won't buy anything without help from someone. The leap from the iMac to a monitor+mini is not very far, with the help that will certainly be given.
Having been that "help" for many years for parents and grandparents, I can guarantee you that having a setup with as few components and cables as possible that break is more for my sanity than for their comfort. As folks get a little bit older and less nimble, random cables get pulled and drinks get spilled on keyboards.
You can book an appointment at the Genius Bar and they'll run you through how to set it up. I'm sure even the proverbial grandmother would feel confident enough to set up an iMac after that. Maybe not a Mini, though.
It's not the five minutes of extra work; it's the cognitive overhead of knowing how to do this stuff. Talk to someone who knows nothing about computers, sometime. You'll find all kinds of misconceptions and worries. "What if I plug it in wrong and break it?" tops the list, usually.
Believe it or not, some people don't want the clutter of extra cables and another box on the desktop to get tangled up in the other stuff. They'll pay the extra to have a clean setup on their desk.
Apple knows some people treat PCs like furniture. That may make you grind your teeth, but at least you have the option.
Surely, if you examine your own life, you will find many instances where you trade time for money.
Do you mend your own socks instead of throwing them out? Change your own oil in your car? Sweep your own chimney? Grow your own food? Roast and brew all of the coffee you drink? Come on.
Wholeheartedly agree, and have noticed my self-perceived break even point on the trade off between time and money moves toward sacrificing money the older I get. My father in law has a memorable quote that sticks with me: "is your time not worth more than that?"
Unless it's something I enjoy doing or my ironic sense of thrift kicks into high gear, I'll sacrifice the money when reasonable.
I do a few of those, but it's a matter of cost benefit. Growing all your own food would probably cost more than buying in many cases. You have to be extremely rich to value your time in the thousands per hour.
> You have to be extremely rich to value your
> time in the thousands per hour.
You and I can simply add a monitor in a few minutes, but it's not five-minute job if it's not a process you're familiar with. There are a lot of questions.
- What monitor do I even buy?
- What's a good monitor brand?
- Do I have to buy an Apple-branded monitor? If not, do I have to look for "Mac compatible" or something on the box?
- I have to buy cables?
- What cables do I need? (The customer will probably need an adapter, at least, as most monitors do not include a Mini-DP connector/adapter)
- Can I just use my TV?
And so on and so forth. It's a lot more than just the physical act of plugging a monitor in.
Again, it's so easy for us, but you if you work in the tech industry you really need to think outside of your own head sometimes. Imagine if car manufacturers expected us to manually adjust the fuel/air mix in the engine because it's just a "five minute job."
You could start by estimating the time cost correctly. You're assuming that the time required to select the right monitor is zero, that the time required to understand the various connection standards is zero, etc., etc., etc. The only cost you're counting is the act of unboxing and plugging it in.
Maybe you and I keep track of this stuff professionally or as a hobby, but most "grandmothers" don't. Quick: What's the best lock-in amplifier for rejecting mains interference. What? You don't know what dynamic reserve means? Jeez, you're such a dummy.
Think about how you would go about buying a piece of technical equipment outside your domain of expertise. That's what a "grandmother" is doing when he/she is buying a monitor.
I once paid $100 to a car mechanic for a job that took him about 5 minutes. The reason I did it was that I didn't know how to do it myself, so I paid whatever it took to get the job done. "Grandma" here is similar.
Always buy refurbished directly from Apple. You get a full year of AppleCare warranty attached to the purchase and can buy more years of AppleCare after that.
I've had nothing but good experiences with this - bought several refurb Macs from Apple and each one has been indistinguishable from a new machine. I always extend my warranty as well.
The only downside is that Apple will charge sales tax, which can be substantial on a $1,000 or $2,000 item. Last time I bought a MBP it was actually cheaper to get a new one from Amazon because they were discounting it. (That was before Amazon started charging sales tax in my state, obviously - otherwise it would have been a wash)
http://www.refurb.me/ is monitoring service for the official Apple refurb store. Because it's hard to know when the product that you want to buy will become available. RefurbMe will alert you by email or SMS to go buy it on the Apple Store.
Perhaps for iOS devices, but the desktop stuff can run for a long time on older hardware.
I'm personally using a refurbed Early 2008 iMac that runs Mavericks just fine. It needed more RAM and hard drive space, but that was nothing that I couldn't have purchased when I bought the machine.
I strongly dislike when people use the "my grandma" argument. So what you're saying is either you're also as technically challenged or you're just an ass for not helping her and letting her go with the less optimal purchase because it's easier to set up.
Dropping $1k to browse Facebook does not make sense, and it never will, I'm sorry.
Because some people like to have a single machine, like my mother who INSISTED on buying an iMac, because she absolutely loved the idea of having to plug only a single cable in, and not having the computer as a separate box, just a monitor on her desk. That's not a choice I would make,but she liked it,so why not?
You forgot to account for speakers - more cables there. In general, the advantage to an all-in-one device is aesthetics. If you want something in your living room? All-in-one is the way to go. If you go with a wireless keyboard and mouse, you're tethered by a single solitary power cable.
It's once place where I'm generally disappointed in Apple's competitors (I loathe Apple but I freely admit they win because they're the best). Non-Apple all-in-one devices either ugly and anemic or fail to compete with Apple on price (if Apple beats you on price, you lose). The big thing I think competitors need to learn from Apple is to stop being such size-queens. Save some money on monitor size and focus on getting the other details right.
Same goes for laptops - the average Windows laptop the same size as the the largest Macbook. Apple is one of the only companies even building in the 11" form-factor.
> You forgot to account for speakers - more cables there.
I'd love it if my current monitor came with the iMac's speakers. I don't know if it was the speakers or the enclosure necessarily, but the iMac at my last office job sounded great.
On the technical front, this one has a Haswell CPU (more efficient and has a HD5000), 8GB RAM, an IPS screen, and bundled keyboard and mouse. Also you can still plug an external monitor to "change" the display.
On the functional side, thanks to the L shaped foot with the huge cable guiding hole, iMacs "hover" over the desk and thus have almost zero footprint. It's extremely practical to be able to push documents around or move your legs and not have dangling cables or boxes occupying above- or below-desk space.
Well, at this point in time, the Mac mini is pretty old tech. It was last updated in 2012 and has an Ivy Bridge CPU and Intel HD 4000 graphics and 802.11n. The iMac is the next gen, so it has a Haswell CPU, Intel HD 5000 graphics, and 802.11ac.
Also, I think buying your own external display that is the same quality as the iMac one would be more expensive than people think... but then , most people don't need that good a display.
The Haswell CPU in the iMac is still slower then the Ivy Bridge CPU in the Mac mini. The IPC boost from Ivy Bridge to Haswell isn't enough to make up the difference in clock rate. HD5000 is a decent upgrade though.
That depends heavily on the workload. For optimized floating-point code, Haswell is a beast (16 double precision flops per core per cycle, vs 8 for Ivybridge).
My grandpa wondered about $200 dungerees. Going into the Apple store and walking out with a box is an experience people will pay for. So is looking at one's desk and remembering that experience via gazing at an artifact or suggesting that experience in conversation.
There's more to it than that of course, just as with $200 pants - they're often nicer to wear rather than good enough. So long as they fit. But they aren't usually cut for all body shapes. It's ok to say 'Not for me' and move on by which I mean that assuming this is an alternative to a Mini has already ruled out all those people who don't consider Mini's in the first place.
Assuming that you are knowledgeable about computers and not just looking for the most simple solution, its aesthetics and simplicity. Well engineered up to the very last detail, beautiful, great software, very good hardware.
There is no real competition in this space (unfortunately), so people pay a premium. If you care about how your room feels, let me tell you: it feels a lot better with an iMac instead of some ugly 3rd party monitor.
I didn't care about that as much, but now for me it is absolutely worth it.
Also, its a computer for people that don't like to invest huge amounts of time finding the "right" pc - I've started to appreciate that as well.
"If you care about how your room feels, let me tell you: it feels a lot better with an iMac instead of some ugly 3rd party monitor..."
Agreed. You'll see a lot of iMacs at design-conscious shops like art galleries and boutiques, and in architects' homes. These applications/people have different objective functions than many HN readers.
It's "becoming" the norm? That was happening 6-8 years ago. Now 1080p has been the norm for something like two upgrade cycles, and anyone who currently cares about resolution beyond that is looking at 1440p or more.
There was certainly a transition from 5:4 to widescreen displays in the 2000s, with nearly everyone but Apple opting for 16:9. I don't recall any mass adoption of 16:10 followed by a mass migration to 16:9 in the last decade, which is what you're stating happened.
If Apple is moving from 16:10 to 16:9, then that would indeed be a very recent development. If this is the case, it would be kind of sad to me (I prefer a bit more vertical space), but understandable given the economics of the panel business.
> I don't recall any mass adoption of 16:10 followed by a mass migration to 16:9 in the last decade, which is what you're stating happened.
I don't quite agree with what you're stating I'm stating. (I realize that this has gone on way longer than the original reply warranted, but...)
User teh_klev said that they were sad that 1080p "was becoming" the norm on medium sized panels, and that 1920x1200 wasn't becoming the norm, instead.
I replied that the transition to 1080p had already occurred, some time ago. I don't believe that either teh_klev or I implied that there was mass adoption of 1920x1200 (16:10), only that teh_klev would have preferred that there have been such a mass adoption, and I was suggesting that that preference (which I share, though I didn't mention it[1]) became moot last decade.
[1] though it turns out that if the screen is large enough and the resolution high enough, I no longer care about the precise aspect ratio...
Oh aye, I know the transition has happened for a while. I also realise why this happened (due to the 1080p/16:9 format being the standard in content delivery and consumer displays such as flat screen tellys). This makes it a marketing no brainer for box builders such as Dell and Apple to standardise on 16:9, the format and "1080p" branding is recognisable to consumers.
However, for those of us doing "serious" work where we need those extra 120 lines, finding a decent >=21" panel (or even 17" one in a laptop) is getting expensive/more difficult to find.
I think the extra 180 pixels of vertical resolution is what he's worried about. I am too, that little bit helps a lot, even with the dock hidden and off to the side of the screen.
It's more expensive to get a Mac Mini with equivalent performance, monitor, camera, speakers, keyboard, ram and mouse/trackpad, etc.
The gap is the closest I've seen yet—the mini used to be very underpowered and this is the lowest clock speed I've seen on an iMac in a long time. But the iMac is still the better value, especially if you want a top-quality machine. That said, I don't see how many people would want the $1100 model instead of the $1300 model now that there's such a gap between the two.
It's definitely an interesting option for schools with a need for larger computers that also have space for labs. For schools with smaller budgets and space constraints, it's hard to compete with Chromebooks for price and portability. It really comes down to the intended use: students working on graphics, game design, video, etc. will benefit greatly from iMacs; students learning typing and/or basic programming do well on Chromebooks.
The used to offer a few low-end options to schools that were not available in the regular Apple store. This iMac is probably just opening that up to the general public.
Geeks tend to forget that there is more to a computer than raw numbers.
Design, noise, materials, software (try getting that inspiron with apps like garageband, imove, pages and numbers for less than $1099), support (walk into the apple store and someone's there to help) and general ecosystem (time machine, app store, UNIX foundation (no real viruses)).
You're right of course. Honestly, I wouldn't buy any of them myself (the iMac included). But getting a better user experience does count for something. I'm just lamenting that it looks like the return of the Apple tax, which was thankfully going away with things like the MBA and the rMBP which really were better than similarly priced offerings.
>1.4 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost Speeds up to 2.7 GHz, Intel HD 5000 graphics, 8GB of memory and a 500GB hard drive.
Eh.. I got similar specs in laptop form for about half the price on black Friday last year.
I'd like to get something like this for a desktop but I'm afraid my Ubuntu might have some issues on the hardware. I'll wait until I find it slightly used for half the cost.
On a side note: Is absolutely everything Apple does "HN worthy"?
Can someone explain to me how this product is new or innovative or really interesting?
>I'd like to get something like this for a desktop but I'm afraid my Ubuntu might have some issues on the hardware. I'll wait until I find it slightly used for half the cost.
It's similar in the idea, it will support Ubuntu (or Linux in general) 100%, no drivers problems. Obviously it's not branded Apple so some people might not like it.
That sounded cynical but leaving out possibly the most expensive component on the iMac to compare it to a generic laptop with a smaller screen on a Black friday sale doesn't make sense.
Well this is just your opinion. IMHO, I think you are incorrect. I think you and people like you do more harm to the image of Apple than good and I think your post adds no value to this discussion.
Glad they are moving a little downmarket. My friend wanted a new computer, and I figured an iMac would be perfect for her, because she just plans to sit it on a desk. But then I looked at the prices... who wants to spend $1299 on a desktop machine nowadays? And that's with no SSD, so a Macbook Air is probably going to be faster for a lot of stuff in day-to-day to use.
It's frustrating to see Sony fail like that - Sony was Apple back when Apple was doomed. I keep waiting for a Win32/Android company to position themselves as "Apple without the Apple OS". Sony has succeeded there with the Xperia line, but their laptops don't reflect that.
having just bought the $1299 model last year, glad to see they're trying to offer a cheaper model. Lowest used to be $1199 a few years back - another $100 to $1299 (essentially $1400 with tax) was a big hit to take. Yes, $200 is just $200 - these new $1099 ones aren't free, but... this may make the difference between someone getting a new one vs not.
1.4ghz seems awfully slow, but... I suspect for a lot of what many people do - email, youtube, Facebook, a bit of iTunes music, this will be more than fine. But maybe not. I'd rather people not have a horribly bad experience on something too underpowered for the software. That said, they pushed out the retina mbp a couple years ago(?) and that experience was not all that great (imo) - laggy window drag, etc.
I do all my development work (which involves a lot of heavy Scala stuff) on a 2012 MacBook Air, which is a wee bit slower than this one. The CPU really is not a problem.
There's no SSD or 'Fusion Drive' in this one, which will make it bog down a lot. It's a shame that Apple won't go for a $999 model with a 64GB SSD or something. Should be enough for classrooms and anyone who wants a basic computer.
It's not that necessary. Sure, I use macbooks now because they're kinda great hardware. When my parents were looking for a new all-in-one, they could get all this for about half the cost with a Windows PC that they already knew how to navigate around.
SSD and Fusion are BTO options just like on the rest of the iMac line.
My bigger complaint is that the RAM is non-upgradable even as BTO. I really couldn't imagine if I had to bring my computer back down to 8GB RAM from 16.
I guess it's all in perception - I do a lot of Java work on a 2012 MBP 2.3 quad core with 16g and an SSD - still feels slow to me quite often. Have not even considered a MBA because of this.
I have a similar spec 2012 MBP. Are you using Trim Enabler? Otherwise, you may have lost a lot of SSD performance. Also, do you monitor RAM usage? Browsers can eat up your RAM. OS X needs RAM for disk caching for snappy performance.
When using Trim Enabler, you basically have to re-check it after every system software update. (Not apps, but the OS.) I have the app set up start automatically, so I can take a look. I think there are paid options for more convenient facilities.
Yeah, a fusion drive would be a perfect default for this type of computer. It would feel fast while still giving a regular desktop user plenty of space for their media.
What's your opinion of using this for a kids' first computer? (Let's set aside the "toy" computers sold at Christmas). I'm assuming it's more than adequate for most things. Won't be used for video-encoding, playing hardcore games, etc. Literally for the family which means very simple needs. Is 1.4ghz really that slow? Really??!!
I got my kid a Panasonic Toughbook CF-18 when he was 5 years old. I bought it used for less than $200 and installed Linux Mint on it.
The small keyboard of the CF-18 is perfect for little hands, the rugged construction means he probably won't break it whatever he tries, and Linux Mint just works, as usual.
He uses it mostly for watching movies, playing educational games (GCompris and such), looking at small things with a USB microscope I got from DealExtreme, taking to Grandma on Skype, and recently, he has started making little Scratch programs. He's really proud to own a real computer.
Preschool children are not the target market of Panasonic Toughbooks, but they actually are a great fit.
I instructed my in-laws to buy the low-end iMac last year. I tried to get them to go for a MacBook, but they had to have a desktop. The SSD would have been tons faster, but for their purposes, this works great.
Comparing this on the store page[1] this is a significant jump down from the $1,299 iMac in CPU, graphics and hard drive space. Seems like the Mac is taking a page from the iPhone line and selling last year's model as a cheaper option.
Even though I copied a "gold build" from "TonyMacx86" (the "hackintosh authority"), the machine freezes randomly every hour, sometimes a week. But it will freeze and I'll have to do a hard reset.
Also, many of Apples services won't work with a hackintosh. iMessage and FaceTime, for example. To fix it, you'll need to call Apple and convince them to whitelist your fake generated system ID, risking getting your apple ID banned.
Something also happened during the installation so I have to have a Mavericks USB drive attached at all times to boot the damn thing.
Oh, and don't forget you have to reconfigure the whole thing when you apply an update.
Had I known these things I'd just have saved up a little more and bought the real thing.
I built one last year, and it's far from being a nightmare. I also followed the builds from the site you mentioned, as best as I could in my country (local dealers are cheaper, or on-par to amazon around here) - the few deviations I had to make just require me to replace the NIC and Graphic kexts after an update (but I can do this on the same system, it's not unusable without them). The only other problem I did not bother to fix yet is that I can't watch hardware-accelerated movies in the browser (really not required with the work I do this machine).
But still, it was for fun. I'd never use them as a substitute to the real thing, the price difference is too small IMHO – I do factor in the time I "waste" on a system.
So I don't quite get where people got the Idea that a Hackintosh is worth the hassle to be used as a substitute. C'mon, it's even in the name.
Mine works perfectly fine. Installing OS X was pretty painless and the only problem I have is that point updates break audio but that is a two minute fix. iMessages and Facetime work as expected.
The first time I built one I had lots of problems like you described but that was pretty much due to me not really knowing what the hell I was doing.
Is something wrong with your hardware? That doesn't sound right at all. I have a hackintosh (not the gold build, just my own uber-cheap machine based on their recommendations) and it has never had an issue.
That's what I thought, but it runs ubuntu and windows without issues. Many people have similar issues. I actually think the freezing has been solved with a new kext i installed recently, but how can I be 100% sure?
That's a shame. I built one for fun and it works perfectly. There were a couple of tweaks I had to make to get dual monitors working, the sound working, etc, but it didn't take longer than a few hours.
This is one of the reasons why ponying up the extra money for a Mac system is a good deal, you get a box, you open the box, you press the on button and you're ready to go.
Indeed. I get a little depressed thinking about the hours I've wasted on the tonymac forums looking up solutions to the problems I've having and trying random things to see if it worked.
In my experience with other OS' (Windows 3.1 -> Windows 8, Ubuntu 4 -> Ubuntu 13, half a dozen other Linux varieties), I've never been able to open the box and get to work within half an hour. There's always been some niggle. It's a bit trickier now that the dev tools are an optional download rather than a CD/setup option, but in practise I'm usually good to start working with a fresh Mac in about half an hour. With Linux there's a lot more tinkering to get it just so, and with Windows there's generally a lot more to download and configure to get it working comfortably.
Calling something illegal is usually reserved for things that are in the criminal code. There is no law against running Mac OS X on non-Apple computers. No one will be going to jail. Nothing will happen. You don't even have to feel bad. Apple would have to sue in civil court and would have to prove damages. They would not be able to prove damages.
It would make more sense if you said "calling something a crime is...".
I disagree with this comment due to the level of colloquial discussion. Illegal is (colloquially) whatever you can't do because of the law. (Just about the only exception is a contract, which you might be forced to follow because of the law, but we don't view as part of the law in a colloquial sense.)
Regarding "nothing will happen, you don't even have to feel bad." That is a very narrow view and I disagree that this is the correct way to view all civil torts.
Indeed, the whole idea of a tort is that you have wronged someone. You are literally saying that you don't ever have to feel bad for wronging someone, because they would have to sue you and prove their case, even though an entire field of law has been enacted to give them the possibility of making them whole again.
On a very literal level, you are saying "you don't have to feel bad for wronging your neighbor." (Which is the definition of a tort.)
precisely because of how damaging it is to someone. The terms I use is that it shoudl "be illegal", and I compare it with libel and slander, which are both torts.
Basically, your view is no different from saying that you are innocent until you are proven guilty of a crime. Well, yes and no.
This is a contract question, specifically the End User License Agreement. It is not a case of innocent until proven guilty. It is innocence because there is no guilt. Civil courts do not determine guilt. Civil procedure is concerned with establishing damages. This isn't just semantics. This is the entire definition of what these words mean.
In the case of running Mac OS X on a non-Apple computer, Apple is not wronged. Where are the damages? What has Apple lost? Apple has lost nothing.
Running Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware damages Apple as much as putting on a Harry Potter puppet show at a children's library damages JK Rowling. Zero. It just makes people more interested in Apple hardware and JK Rowling books and movies respectively.
If Apple can find you, they can send you a cease and desist letter. That is the most action they can take. Likewise for JK Rowling shutting down a puppet show using characters she created.
"There is no law against" except in Professor Kingsfield's class on contract law. "You come in here with a skull full of MUSH; you leave thinking like a lawyer." Which I am not.
Against the licence != illegal, depending on where you are in the world. In most EU countries, if you show the receipt of purchase for a stand alone copy of OSX, you can install it on anything you like legally,EULA prohibiting that would never stand up in any European court.
I had a hackintosh Dell Mini 9 netbook that I used as my primary machine for 2 years.
As far as hackintosh's go, I think it's accepted that piece of hardware is one of the best supported ever. All the hardware worked flawlessly, all the time. It even slept and work up.
Even still, there were a hundred little things that it did (or didn't do) compared to Apple hardware running OS X. After all those years, the choice was very simple. I bought a MacBook Air, and I've never regretted it.
And the cost of significantly more complexity and a far from optimal user experience. A hackintosh is fine for a very minute slice of the population. Even building a PC, except for hard-core gamers, isn't really a thing anymore.
> And the cost of significantly more complexity and a far from optimal user experience.
I've never done a Hackintosh (very happy with other unixes), but is this true? Certainly more complexity with setting it up, but afterwards? If you follow http://www.tonymacx86.com/home.php and get hardware they recommend and follow their guides isn't it pretty close to Apple's own computers?
My old man managed to build a Hackintosh and a "Hackbook Pro" just fine, following the tonymacx86 guides so far as I know. I helped him assemble the tower because he had never built a PC before, but he installed Mac OS himself.
The machines have minor problems on occasion; but to be frank I don't expect any computer to work with 100% reliability.
For instance a problem my dad w/ the hackintosh tower stemmed from storing `/Users` on a secondary hard drive.
Occasionally the hard drive would not mount quickly enough and Mac OS would create skeleton home directories under `/Volumes/<drive2>/Users` which would bork the login. Plus the volume can no longer automount since the path `/Volumes/<drive2>` now exists.
---
The HP ProBook works really well but it has had strange issues w/ the wireless card.
For some reason the wireless card lost the region code stored in its firmware. As a result Mac OS no longer sees the wireless card. (System Profiler shows the hardware, but refuses to recognize it as an "Airport Express" card.)
Humorously: the utilities to reflash Atheros firmware don't run on Mac OS.
---
I have to admit that I'm a bit jealous. The "Hackbook Pro" runs much faster than my actual MacBook Pro of similar vintage (late '11).
I don't understand this product. For the same price, you could get a model with much better specs from the Apple Refurbished Store. Anyone who has ever bought Apple Refurb knows that the products are essentially new.
I agree with the bulk of your statement, which is why the last three Apple computers I've bought with my own money have been refurbs.
However, people that walk into an Apple store to buy a computer don't want to buy a "used" computer. (Or people placing bulk orders for enterprises or educational institutions, either.)
Comes with an SSD build-to-order option, or a fusion drive option, which is a SSD + large HDD with the SSD as a block-level cache.[1]
If it's the same as last year's model[2], it isn't that hard if you are used to working on laptops or mini-itx cases. Just have to be careful about dust, have a few torx bit screwdrivers, and some adhesive strips which you can find for $15-20.
I already have 3 SSDs floating around that I know are good (Samsung 840 Pro). I wouldn't want to kick out for another 256Gb SSD when I already have one. Not only that, those fusion drives are terribly unreliable from experience.
Regardless of that, that process is HELL compared to another machine. The thing I'm typing this on now (Lenovo T400) requires any old screwdriver you have lying around and 2 mins.
1960s point to point wired televisions are easier to repair.
I wouldn't want to kick out for another 256Gb SSD when I already have one.
All current Macs[1] currently use PCIe SSD drives, which are not interchangeable with SATA SSD drives. They are, however, around 10x faster than SATA SSD drives, which is something people never seem to mention when comparing 'specs'.
[1] with the exception of the 13-inch non-Retina MBP, which is presumably being phased out.
You need suction cups to take out the glass, and then you will never ever get the screen clear of dust before you attach the glass again, unless you work in a sterile environment. And it drives me nuts to see even a single speck of dust under that glass.
My guess? This suggests the old paradigm Mac Mini's lifecycle may be winding down because this targets Apple's core market in a manner consistent with the rest of Apple's product lineup and the not-all-in-one Mini doesn't no matter how much communities like this one love it.
